Saylor.org HIST212: "American Society in the 1920's"

In today's lecture we're going to be focusing on American society in the 1920s. We're going to focus on three particular trends that really played a big role in shaping American society during this decade. The first of these trends we're going to be looking at is the growth of a consumer society. And this is a society that's primarily focused on buying things really for the sake of buying things, not necessarily because you need them, but because you want them. This is a huge change from the previous century, and we'll talk about in just a minute why. Next we're going to look at the growth of a movement to ban alcohol in the 19-teens that develops into what we call Prohibition. And this is during the decade of the 1920s. The production and sale of alcohol in the United States is forbidden by federal law. It has, once again, a big impact on the United States and on American society. The final issue we're going to address is the Great Migration. And this is a mass migration of African Americans from the Deep South to the Northeast, the Midwest, and the Far West during the late teens and in the 1920s. So these are three important trends, all three of which have a huge impact on American society during this decade that we're going to be discussing today. Well, the growth of American consumer society reflects a changing attitude in the United States about the relationship between people and things. Prior to the 1920s, especially during the first half of the 19th century, Americans tended to look at stuff. In other words, the things that they owned, things that they needed, and that they used in life as—essentially, the stuff was there to make life easier. People didn't necessarily buy things unless they were very wealthy just for the sake of purchasing things. They only would buy things if they absolutely had to. Most of the time, they would make things or they would barter or trade with their neighbors for things that they couldn't make themselves. Because American society by and large was cash poor. People didn't have a lot of cash, a lot of money to spend on things. Most of that went into their basic living expenses. Well, by the end of the 19th century and certainly into the first couple decades of the 20th century, American attitudes about the stuff that they owned or the stuff that they wanted began to change quite considerably. And people began to think that instead of buying things only because they absolutely have to, they're going to think about buying things because they want to. Or perhaps they need things. I need that new jacket. I need that new sweater. I need that new car. These kind of ideas about want and need began to change quite a bit. And a lot of this has to do with attitudes—changing attitudes about work as well. Americans by the 1920s are working far fewer hours than they had in previous decades. They have a lot more disposable income. And their attitudes about work itself began to change. And work ceases to be the end of it and kind of an end—essentially people going to work because that was how they fulfilled themselves in life. During the 19th century, people often talked about, well, this is my profession, and that's what I want to do, and I'm going to do it until I die. Well, by the 20th century, those attitudes began to change. People stopped thinking about work necessarily as kind of the end-all and be-all activity. Work is simply there to provide you with money that you can then use to buy stuff that you want. And so this is a very important social and cultural change that has an impact on American purchasing and spending habits during the 20th century, especially in the 1920s. And the impact of this, of course, is that for the most part, American society becomes much more reoriented around buying stuff. And American businesses become much more focused on selling things to consumers. And, of course, the ideal way to do that is to create what people at the time called palaces of consumption, a department store. Here we have department stores in Pittsburgh and in another case. Here we have a food court in a turn-of-the-century department store, a place where people could go shop and then have a nice meal and then go back to shopping again. And so places to sell stuff become very important as part of this growing consumer culture. Advertising becomes very important, especially the celebrity endorsement. Here we have Babe Ruth. He drinks Red Rock Cola and so should you because if he drinks it, it must be good. Advertisements for, in this case, a pocket watch or a bread company on the side of a car. And so people begin to see a lot more exposure to purchasing. And advertisers begin to use psychology as a source of psychological selling principles to get people to buy stuff. And so advertising becomes a very important part of this growing consumer economy. Certainly, fashion is an important part of this economy. People stop buying clothing because they've worn out their old clothing. They buy clothing because it's in fashion, and fashion becomes a huge part of the 20s identity. For women especially, if they're not wearing the latest fashion, then they're just not part of the hip scene. And so it becomes a very important part of knowing what's in fashion because that's important to purchasing. Advertisers focus on getting people to worry about things that they've never worried about before. Listerine focuses on breath. How is your breath? Is your breath good enough that people will put up with you? This is not something people tend to worry about in the 19th century. But by the 20th century, Listerine has created an entire industry focused on making your breath smell better, making your oral health better. And this is sort of this genius of advertising is that they create issues. Essentially, you have new products that you can buy to solve problems you didn't even know you had. Lastly, probably one of the most important aspects of this growing consumer culture is the automobile. The automobile, which predates the 1920s, but during the 1920s is a massive decade for automobile sales, certainly among men and also among women. Women, for the first time, really become drivers in the 20s as new cars are developed that are easier to start. They're easier to operate. They don't break down as much. They can go greater distances. And so women take to using the automobile for shopping and for enjoyment, for just going out and having fun. Cities, of course, have to be modified for the automobile. You have to widen streets so you can park your cars on the streets. Build parking garages, as many cities do, and make it easier for people to go shopping in the downtowns as opposed to having to make it much more difficult to get in and around. And so certainly these growing shifts have a big impact on shopping in the 20s. Now, the last point that kind of shapes this, of course, as I mentioned, is that there's an economic shift in the 20s. Wages in the 1920s lead inflation of prices by 15%. In other words, wages are higher, are going up higher than the cost of items. So people just have more money to spend. This, of course, leads to expansion of the middle class as well. We also see the changing, for instance, people before the 20s tend to work 60 hours a week. This drops down to about 40 hours on average. People have more time free to go to movies, to have fun, to buy stuff, to go shopping. And it just really changes attitudes towards this. The final point that shapes this, of course, is the rise of consumer credit. And credit has a huge impact on the 20s because, well, people don't necessarily have a lot of money and they want stuff now. And how are they going to do that? Well, they're going to put it on credit. They're going to take a loan. They're going to pay by installment. They're going to do all these different ways to get things now and pay for them later. Of course, during the 20s, while the economy is really good, this is no problem. But by the 1930s, the economy goes into a depression and suddenly people have loans they can't pay. And they have more house mortgages they can't pay. And so this credit culture of the 20s does lead to some really bad negative side effects that Americans eventually begin to experience in the 1930s. Well, the second trend we're going to be focusing on today in this lecture is prohibition, this effort to ban the production and sale of alcohol. We're getting rid of alcohol in the United States. Prohibition predates the 1920s. In fact, it really goes back to the early decades of the 19th century. Primarily in the 19th century, the groups that were anti-alcohol were evangelical Christians. They were primarily against alcohol because they felt that alcohol had bad consequences for Americans. It led people to do stupid things. It led to abuse in the family of women, abuse of women, abuse of children by drunken husbands and fathers. It led people to spend all their money on booze when they should be saving it for a rainy day. And so for a large part, this was Christians organizing to try to make life better for people because they viewed alcohol as a kind of a moral evil in society. Well, by the 19-teens, the Christians had begun to team up with progressives. Remember these progressive political groups who wanted to improve society and fix all the problems in society. And the progressives like prohibition because, again, it's aimed at making people better, more productive citizens by getting rid of their attachment to alcohol. And so the prohibitionists, the progressives who are against alcohol, by the beginning of World War I, they have an opportunity to enforce nationwide prohibition. Because, of course, during the war, efforts are made to reduce waste and promote thriftiness and help Americans live better lives. And one way to do that is by banning alcohol production. Those distilleries and breweries that are making alcohol for people to consume could be making other things for the war effort. Alcohol can be used in explosives. And so efforts are made to pass laws to ban the production of alcohol for consumers. And ultimately in 1917, the Volstead Act is passed. And the Volstead Act is what becomes the 18th Amendment, which bans the production and sale of alcohol nationwide beginning in 1920. Of course, for these progressives, even though the war is over by 1920, had been over for almost two years, this is a great victory. They have banned this scourge of alcohol. The US is dry. The last call for alcohol, because alcohol is going away. And pretty soon the nation will be better off than it was. The nation's children will be protected. Uncle Sam will be happy. And so progressives, of course, are very thrilled about this, and they think it's a way of making Americans happier, healthier, and ultimately for them, doing away with a lot of the vices associated with alcohol. But it quickly becomes obvious that prohibition is not this panacea. It's not this universal solution that many of the progressives thought it would be. Because very quickly it becomes obvious that while many Americans are willing to sort of publicly support prohibition in private, they wanted their liquor. They wanted their beer and their whiskey and their alcohol and their wine and all the other things that people like to drink. And so while many Americans kind of publicly supported prohibition, privately they wanted their liquor. Well, as liquor drinking is pushed underground, it means that criminals get involved. People like Al Capone here who makes a fortune smuggling in whiskey from Canada to the Chicago area and makes his – as a mob boss, makes a huge amount of money by doing this. Organized crime takes over the essentially smuggling in of alcohol from Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, and in some cases using speedboats to run shipments of liquor in from ships offshore. And alcohol becomes big business for organized crime, leads to lots of corruption of public officials, leads to huge amounts of violence as rival gangs fight it out for control of the whiskey or in some cases simply just the alcohol industry. In many cases, local law enforcement refuses to enforce prohibition and go after local speakeasies because they think it's a waste and they think it's useless. And so oftentimes it's the federal government, federal agents who are being involved with having to break up these illegal alcohol operations and busting people who are involved in alcohol production and sales. And so ultimately for many cases, it's a huge expense, huge waste of federal money to try to enforce these anti-alcohol laws. And growing over the 20s, Americans become increasingly vocal against prohibition. They want their beer. They want their wine. They want their hard liquor. And they're less and less willing to accept this argument that the government knows best, that prohibition is just good for everybody. It makes for a happier, healthier society. And so prohibition, while like I said, has sort of noble ambitions, proves to be increasingly unpopular in the United States and ultimately is abolished in the early 1930s, as we'll talk more about in our next lecture. The third trend I want to focus on in the remaining time of this lecture today is the Great Migration. And the Great Migration, as I mentioned at the very beginning, is this huge movement of African Americans from the deep south, from these deep southern states, into the industrial northeast, the midwest, and the far west, the west coast. It's a migration of about one and a half to nearly two million African Americans. So we can certainly characterize it as a mass migration. It fundamentally changes the cultures of urban environments in the northeast, the midwest, and the west coast. It changes environments in the south as well, and it gives African Americans new opportunities that they had not had previously. So it's a very important social trend during this time period. Why does the Great Migration happen? Well, the main reason is because there's a growing demand for labor in factories in the northeast, midwest, and the west coast, especially once World War I begins. Because when World War I begins, this huge supply of European immigration is cut off. And since European immigrants were the ones who were working in most of these factories, factory owners are desperate for workers. And they start offering higher wages. They start employing African Americans. And so a few African Americans begin to migrate north into these cities. They find the jobs are pretty good. The treatment isn't too bad. And they send that money home and encourage their family to migrate. And pretty soon, entire families are making the long trek by train out of the deep south and into this north, the midwest, and the west coast. In this case here, we have a picture of a waiting station and a train station. You have huge numbers of people all waiting for that train to take them up north so that they can go to work in the factories. I'll give you an idea of numbers. Before the 20s, from about 1916 to 1920, about half a million African Americans migrated. During the 1920s, over a million. So a huge, huge number of migrants. They do find, of course, that there is violence, racial violence in the north. A lot of whites living in cities are not happy with African Americans migrating into the north. And certainly the U.S. remains a very racially segregated – whether legally or informally – throughout much of the 20th century, well into the post-World War II era of the 1960s and 1970s.